


when the wolf comes home

by spiritphones



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Nebulously Hand-Wavey Future, Post-Canon, Spoilers, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-16 22:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21279023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritphones/pseuds/spiritphones
Summary: Something about an aftermath, something about domesticity.





	when the wolf comes home

**Author's Note:**

> timeline? no. correct characterization? no. are both martin and jon autistic and also trans? yes.
> 
> very vague spoilers.  
maybe i'll write more of this. i mostly just wanted to put this out there before i could chicken out or spend ten hours editing it.

“D’you figure,” asks Martin, “that it was for a reason?”

“What part.”

Martin makes a vague hand-waving motion - at Jon, bony knees folded like origami across his chest, at the tight intertwining of their fingers, at the scars, at himself. 

“Well,” says Jon, teeth clattering, eyes fluttering, curled in on himself like his lean figure could take up less space if he just twisted into himself enough, “that’s a bit-“

“Vague, right. Right.”

“Well,” says Jon again, and then he doesn’t say anything else. The edges of his eyes crinkle up in a smile that his lips do not follow, and Martin loves him immensely.

Some days Martin’s words fill his brain like chattering birds, like rats scrambling at cell walls, filling him up in the head and pressing down on his chest. He thinks too much, and maybe the him of the past would’ve just never spoke any of them, just stuffed it all in little notebooks and called it poetry, but that person hasn’t been him for a while. 

The person he is here- breathes, and says, “I don’t think it’d matter. If it was.”

Jon unfurls briefly to blink over at him from between his knobby knees. 

“I don’t! Quit _ looking,_” he smiles, and Jon goes red with muffled laughter and sticks his face back into the spaces he’s allowed himself to fill. “I don’t. If it’s all some big- conspiracy, or whatever, then. Then it just means that we’re meant to be here. That this exact moment was meant to happen. That we were always going to be right here right now, together, on your _ shitty _couch-“

“It is not shitty!”

“But it _ is_!” Martin crows, and he lays himself across Jon’s side with pure posh. His soft edges splay across Jon’s angles, and he.

and he,

“I’m happy,” he realizes.

Jon blinks down at him, again, face turned to where Martin’s slid down to rest his head on the cushions. He looks like a startled owl when he makes that face.

“Are you?”

“I am,” he says, and swishes that around in his mouth to feel it. It’s dark in their flat, the curtains drawn over the night sky and the hall light shining warm and thin on the creases of Jon’s face.

“I think,” says Jon, his gross sweaty hand still clasped in Martin’s, “that I am too.”

  
  


Jon is all points and sharp edges and hard lines. He is tired and hurt and he is harsh. People therefore tend to think Jon, all quick words and dry wit, must be the threat. That there could be no danger in his boyfriend’s watery eyes and soft creases and bumbling fingers.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Because Jonathan Sims is an utter disaster of a man made of dry sticks just waiting to catch fire, and Martin Blackwood’s roundness is only better for hiding sharp knives.

Everyone underestimates Martin. Martin couldn’t be lying, couldn’t deceive, not good ol' Martin, pressing tea into hands that do not thank him. That kindness is stupidity. His words,

his care,

is all pure weakness.

That compassion is a liability.

Jon used to think like that, he remembers. He thinks about that when he listens to old tapes, full of hunger for knowledge and knives for words. That he bit and barked at Martin because Jon could not understand why his prickly, thorny walls would not keep this man out, could not understand. Maybe didn’t want to understand.

Jon tries more now. Funny that the more _ monster _ he becomes, the more he tries to be a better _ person,_ that he

wants to be kind.

A kind monster.

Martin, Jon knows, is not happy with the person he was with the Lonely. The both of them, making an effort to know each other outside of the ideal images they’ve made in isolation of each other. To be better than the people they have been.

They learn.

  
  


A series of knowledge: 

Jon loudly gargles his mouthwash and then gags on it before near throwing it back up into the sink, which he thinks is perfectly normal.

Martin snores. Loudly.

Jon chews his nails to straggly stumps and then struggles to separate his paperwork.

Martin has _ the worst _taste in television, and he will make puppy eyes at Jon until he gives in and watches with him. It is actually a ploy by Martin to get Jon to pass out from boredom and finally get some amount of sleep.

Jon uses 3-in-1 bodywash-shampoo-conditioner and dollar store bar soap. Martin is driven to tears by the pure desolate wasteland of his bathroom, bare of product. 

  


Love is bare, and honest, and warm, and a little irritating. Love, in the aftermath, is heating pads on searing joints. It’s naming the fat pillbug in the kitchen cabinet and making up a fake story for its life. It’s knowing when the rain comes in to have the painkillers ready. It’s learning to deal with someone’s weird sleep schedule and also knowing when to bully them into bed. 

It’s tea -

Tea in mugs and pitchers and plastic cups from bars,

tea for sleep and tea for pain and tea for love,

And love, and love, and love.


End file.
